DIRECTORY 2024

Sandra Cavanagh | Painting

Sandra Cavanagh was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her young life was shaped by the growing awareness of political instability, coup d’état, an overbearing patriarchal society, and the dangers of state-sanctioned brutality and censorship. She pursued Social Sciences at the University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, before immigrating to California and later to the UK. There, she completed a Foundation Year in Fine Art and a BA at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, University of Kent. In 2010, Sandra returned to the United States, where she has worked and resided in New York City ever since.

Maintaining a figurative focus in reaction to current and historical narratives, including her own, Sandra has been prompted by recent global events to contemplate mortality and the loss of innocence in transgenerational stories. She explores the usefulness of art's centuries-old examination of myth, foundational stereotypes, and the commonplace occurrence of violence.

With an interest in the pairing of form and message, as well as formal variations on a theme, Sandra has worked serially, creating pictorial storylines with a sense of urgency to exhaust a subject to the point of understanding or unburdening herself of it. The result is an annotation of feelings underscoring a dramatic approach to process and result. Preoccupations such as pictorially describing multiple narratives, the translucence of color, and conveying emotion from pen or brush to surface persist, with a focus on presenting that which bothers her beautifully.

sandracavanagh.com

@sandra_cavanagh_artista